Daylight now was yielding to the oncoming storm. Dense shadows hung all
round the room, making the objects in it seem weird and ghost-like in
the gloom. Sudden gusts of wind swept angrily round, causing the
withered leaves and dying flowers in the vases to murmur with unearthly
sounds, as of the sighing of disembodied souls. Only through the
aperture above a streak of greyish light struck full upon the Caesar, as,
with glowing eyes and cruel grasp, he compelled her to look on him.

For a moment she closed her eyes after she had looked, for never before
had she seen anything so hideous and so evil. His misshapen head looked
unnaturally large as it seemed to loom out at her from out the gathering
darkness, his hair stood up sparse and harsh all round his forehead. His
eyes were protruding and shot through with blood; his lips were dry and
cracked, his cheeks of a dull crimson and heavy sweat was pouring down
his face.

When she turned away from him in horror, he broke into that wild laugh
of his which had in it the very sounds of hell.

"Well!" he said with a leer, "hast seen my face? Art still prepared to
disobey?"

"No, my lord," she said slowly, and fixing her eyes fully upon his now,
"but I am prepared to die."

"To die? What senseless talk is this?"

"Not senseless, my good lord. Even the gods do allow us poor mortals to
find refuge from sorrow in death."

"So!" he said slowly, still gripping her wrists and peering into her
face till his scorching breath made her feel sick and faint. "That is
the way thou wouldst defy the will of Caesar? Death, sayest thou?...
Death and disobedience--rather than submission to the wish of him who
has god-like power on earth. Death!" and he laughed loudly even whilst
from afar there came, faint and threatening, the nearer presage of the
coming storm. "What death? A pleasing, dreamless sleep brought on by
drugs? A soothing draught that lulls even as it kills--or hadst
perchance thought of the arena?... of the tiger that roars?... or the
lictor's flail that drives?... hadst thought ... hadst thought ..."

He was foaming at the mouth, his rage was choking him; he had only just
enough strength left in him to tear at the neck of his tunic, for the
next moment he would have fallen, felled like an ox by the power of his
own fury. But as soon as he had released Dea Flavia's wrists and she
felt herself free to move, she rose from her knees, and with quick,
almost mechanical gesture,